I work for You!

When people ask me what I do, I often say "I work for you," which often creates a brief moment of confusion before I explain that I work for the state. Kate thinks I should I just say, "I work for the state, so I guess I work for you."

Anyways, with the Government shutdown entering week 2, I'm not working for you, at least not formally. However, when I am working, my job is to help plan the future of transportation in the state. I'm planner in MnDOT's office of statewide multimodal planning, and we both lead planning efforts and help improve planning in general at the department.

Some of my projects have included a report examining lots of options for sustainable funding and an overview of how we plan for various types of transportation, but my primary role at the moment is managing a visioning effort called Minnesota GO.


Minnesota GO is an effort to create a long-range vision for transportation in the state. It's the first step in updating our 20 year transportation plan. Transportation projects last a long time (20 years for a typical road and close 100 for some bridges), so looking out into the future is kind of important. Yes, there are plenty of pot holes that do indeed need to be fixed today, but we also need to anticipate and prepare for major changes in the future:

• Aging of the Baby Boomers: will they all continue driving into their 80s?
• Rising and erratic fuel prices: will we continue to run on oil forever?
• Economic shifts: what will our economy look like in 15, 20, 30 years?
• Climate Change: will we have more floods, extreme heat days, etc?
  

You get the point.

You can help shape the vision at: www.minnesotago.org Hopefully, this budget crises will be resolved before too long and we can get back to planning for the future.

There's a Place for Fun in Your Life: A Review

Flipping through the Chinook Book, we have Grocery, Dining, Entertainment and Family, Health and Style, Travel and Recreation, Yard and Garden, and Home to choose from. For our purposes we have been focusing on the Dining section but it never hurts to flip through the options just to see what's out there. Today was forecasted to thunderstorm so an indoor activity was in order.

As a giant departure from our regular habits, we picked Underwater Adventures now known as Sea Life, which Minnesota's version of an aquarium and is located at the Mall of America. When the Mall first opened, it's marketing campaign included the a catchy little tune whose main line was, "there's a place for fun in your life, Mall of America." My present day self wonders regularly why teenage self never thought to buy a t-shirt with that logo. It sure would be sweet to have something like that now.

Back to Sea life. This is by far the hardest post to keep succinct. So much to tell perhaps I will split it up. Basically, it was totally fun. Highly recommended. We went with a coupon for each of us, $4 off the price of admission. Lucky for us, today was Laid-Off State Employee Day. That meant Pip was free and I was half price. Sweet!

Great fun, take your kids or partner or friend and have a good time with fish!

July 1st, 2011

Today, the state of Minnesota shut down. To celebrate we have decided to take some time off. Where to go, we thought. We could go to the San Juan Islands. How about Sonoma? Last minute adventure to New York City? Well, with the threat of financial uncertainty looming maybe such an adventure is not in the cards this year. Time to consider a staycation.

Rewind a few months to the greatest time of the year. October. This is when the latest issue of the Chinook Book is released. Local area establishment coupon book. I really like this book because it has some great coupons to places we frequent. Pip likes this book so much, that I found two additional copies hidden away as backups for the future. 

While considering our options for staycation adventures, a great idea was born. How about a Chinook Book Staycation?

The beginnings of this blog will chronicle the next 9 days of our lives as we journey through the great city of Minneapolis with a coupon in hand. We promise at least one Chinook restaurant review with money saved and important notes for bike transportation to and fro.